The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 41. Episode of the Hands

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Episode of the Hands

The unexpected interest made him flush.

Suddenly he seemed to forget the pain –

Consented – and held out

One finger from the others.

The gash was bleeding, and a shaft of sun

That glittered in and out among the wheels,

Fell lightly, warmly, down into the wound.

And as the fingers of the factory owner’s son,

That knew a grip for books and tennis

As well as one for iron and leather –

As his taut, spare fingers wound the gauze

Around the thick bed of the wound,

His own hands seemed to him

Like wings of butterflies

Flickering in sunlight over summer fields.

The knots and notches – many in the wide

Deep hand that lay in his – seemed beautiful.

They were like the marks of wild ponies’ play –

Bunches of new green breaking a hard turf.

And factory sounds and factory thoughts

Were banished from him by that larger, quieter hand

That lay in his with the sun upon it.

And as the bandage knot was tightened

The two men smiled into each other’s eyes.

—Hart Crane,[i]

circa 1917